Public Education: An Autopsy. By Myron Lieberman.
Harvard University Press. 379 pp. $27.95.

The School-Choice Controversy: What is Constitutional?
Edited by James W. Skillen. Baker Book House/Center for Public Justice.
128 pp., $6.99 paper.

Two new entries in the never-ending stream of books advocating parental
choice of schools take diametrically opposed routes to a similar
conclusion. Myron Lieberman argues that public education is beyond
redemption because it is inherently unable to perform effectively and is
overly sensitive to the interests of teachers while ignoring those of
children and their parents. He calls for a consumer-driven market in
educational services, with for-profit schools encouraged to serve those
parents willing and able to pay extra to give their children advantages.
He dismisses with scorn attempts to impose policy constraints on such a
market, such as First Things contributor John Coons' proposal that
schools receiving public funds be required to admit a proportion of
children from poor families. Lieberman has delivered the most relentless
attack yet on the American system of government monopoly of free
schooling. The authors represented in the Center for Public Justice
collection, by contrast, argue that a respect for liberty requires that
parents be enabled to choose schools that satisfy their own religious or
other deeply held convictions, without financial penalty, through a
system of public funding that does not discriminate against choices made
on a religious basis. Contending that there is no such thing as
"neutral" education, the authors accuse the present system of
representing an establishment of secularism and a denial of free
exercise of religion, thus doubly violating the religion clause of the
First Amendment. These brief essays-by ethicist Richard Baer, legal
scholars Edward Larson and Phillip Johnson, and political scientist (and
editor) James Skillen-provide a brief but clear exposition of the
principled case for parental choice, an exposition sympathetic to
religion but not premised upon theological considerations.
- Charles L. Glenn

Emmanuel School of Religion is a small independent Christian
Churches/Churches of Christ seminary set among the mountains in
northeastern Tennessee. As with other schools in this tradition,
students there have to read the writings of Alexander Campbell. But at
Emmanuel they also read the church fathers. This is because Fred Norris,
the author of this delightful little book, teaches there. The
Apostolic Faith is a warm and engaging memoir of Norris' father and
grandfather, both preachers, who were wary of Catholics, and Norris'
discovery that Evangelicals and Catholics have more in common than they
realize. It is also a lively introduction to the Nicene Creed, the faith
they share. Norris is an accomplished historian of Christian thought,
but his treatment of the Creed focuses on its significance for the faith
and life of the churches (Evangelical and Roman Catholic) today. One
story stands out. When Norris' father was serving a congregation in West
Virginia in the 1960s a delegation from the local Roman Catholic Church
asked him to consider becoming their priest. He was honored but
declined. Norris takes this as a metaphor to urge that it is time Roman
Catholics and Evangelicals take each other more seriously and seek to
discover the unity they share. This is a wise and hopeful book, written
out of love, and filled with yearning for the unity of the church.
- Robert L. Wilken

The Debate on the Constitution. Edited by Bernard
Bailyn. Library of America. 2,389 pp. in two volumes. $35 each, $70
boxed set.

For the last few years the Library of America has been producing
splendid, and moderately priced, editions of American classics:
Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Twain,
Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and, well, you name it. Not limiting itself
to novels, short stories, and poems, Library of America has also come
out with historical and political documents of special literary merit-
for instance, a two-volume collection of Abraham Lincoln's speeches,
letters, and miscellaneous scribblings, plus a new edition of Ulysses S.
Grant's famous memoirs. The Debate on the Constitution is the
latest addition to this historical/political line; it is, as its
subtitle indicates, a compendium of "Federalist and Antifederalist
Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle Over Ratification,"
which took place from 1787 to 1789. The ratification debate was
principally an argument as to how the country should be governed; on the
one hand were the federalists (including Madison, Hamilton, Franklin,
John Jay, Washington, and John Adams, among others) pushing for a
strong, centralized, national government, and on the other hand the
antifederalists (such as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, George Clinton,
and Elbridge Gerry) favoring a looser structure that vested more
authority in state and local governments. More than two centuries after
ratification, the issues discussed in these pages are still very much
with us, and in many respects very much unresolved. But they are argued
here with far greater eloquence and erudition, on both sides, than in
any modern forum. Definitely worth owning.

Building the Free Society: Democracy, Capitalism, and Catholic
Social Teaching. Edited by George Weigel and Robert Royal.
Eerdmans/Ethics and Public Policy Center. 246 pp. $16.99 paper.

Substantially revised and updated from an earlier edition, this book is
a must for people who want to think through the connections between
Christian faith and public life. The informative essays take in the full
sweep of modern Catholic social thought, from Rerum Novarum
through Centesimus Annus, and essayists include, in addition to
the editors, such authorities as William Murphy, Thomas Kohler, Robert
Sirico, and James Finn. This volume belongs in any basic library dealing
with questions of religion and society.

An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of
Interreligious Dialogue. By Paul J. Griffiths. Orbis. 150 pp.
$39.95 cloth, $18.95 paper.

Engaging in interreligious dialogue-whether one be Jewish, Christian,
Muslim, Buddhist, or Whatever-is generally thought to require a studied
measure of wimpishness. In order to be polite and in order to keep the
conversation going, one must pretend that he does not think his own
religion to be true. Not so, says Paul Griffiths of the University of
Chicago Divinity School in this bracing and well-argued little book. He
offers a convincing apologetic for NOIA-the necessity of interreligious
apologetics. All religions are chock full of "doctrine-expressing
statements" that purport to be true, and an authentic interreligious
encounter will recognize that statements are sometimes incompatible.
Members of religious communities engaged in dialogue "enter the lists"
to champion the doctrine-expressing statements of their own communities.
They do so in order to learn but also, and inescapably, in order to
vindicate their understanding of the truth. Without "positive
apologetics," Griffiths contends, interreligious dialogue degenerates
into fideism and subjectivism. In addition to corrupting the dialogue
process, the result is to discredit the notion that religion itself is
capable of addressing questions of truth in any publicly important
sense. And that, the author observes, is pretty much the way religion is
viewed, with considerable justice, in the contemporary world. This is an
important book deserving of careful attention.

The second and much-updated edition of a much-respected study of the
ambiguous relationship between religion and the political culture.
Ambiguity and balance mark the author's approach to the hotly
controverted questions engaged, and some readers may wish for a more
sustained argument on one side or the other. But Wald's determination to
be fair to alternative views is also a strength of this reliable survey
of issues too often taken captive to partisanship.